When provisioning a new machine in Google Compute Engine with Vagrant, I spotted the following error messages when updating the system:

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Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/

It appears to be that I was just behind on the race to grab the lock on the APT update. Without getting the latest index, I am not able to upgrade the packages. An simple solution is to wait it out:

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#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# System Update
# =============
apt-get update
while [ "$?" != "0" ]; do
  sleep 5
  apt-get update
done
apt-get -y dist-upgrade

We usually use Vagrant to provision and manage VirtualBox virtual machines or VMs. And Vagrant only ships with VirtualBox support by default. But Vagrant can do much more. VirtualBox is just one of providers, additional providers can be added via the Vagrant plugin system. Here, we are going to use Google Compute Engine as the provider and setup a disposable development environment.

Basic steps involve:

1. Install Vagrant
2. Install vagrant-google plugin
3. Add SSH keys to metadata server
4. Add Vagrant box
5. Add a Vagrantfile and override the defaults from the box
6. Provision the machine

First, install Vagrant (exampled by Debian systems such as Ubuntu):

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$ file=/tmp/vagrant.deb version=1.7.4 && \
  curl -sSL https://dl.bintray.com/mitchellh/vagrant/vagrant_${version}_x86_64.deb > ${file} && \
  sudo dpkg -i ${file} && \
  rm ${file} && \
  vagrant version

Install dependencies for building Debian packages, which are needed for the plugin:

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$ sudo apt-get install -y build-essential

Install vagrant-google plugin:

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$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-google
Installing the 'vagrant-google' plugin. This can take a few minutes...
Installed the plugin 'vagrant-google (0.2.1)'!

In order to SSH into the VM, we need to add public key to the instance which will be provisioned. In Google Compute Engine, this is done via metadata server at the project level.

Add the username to prefix the SSH key, so the Compute Engine will pick it up and create the corresponding user:

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$ echo -n 'chao:' > /tmp/id_rsa.pub
$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> /tmp/id_rsa.pub

Now the concatenated one will have the username:

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chao:ssh-rsa AAAAB3... chao@ubuntu

Setting up SSH keys at the project level:

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$ gcloud compute project-info add-metadata --metadata-from-file \
  sshKeys=/tmp/id_rsa.pub

Google Cloud SDK or gcloud command should be installed already. Now it’s time to configure the machine to be provisioned.

The plugin provides a Vagrant box, which is a package format for Vagrant environments. It is not necessary to create a new box, we can just override the defaults by the Vagrantfile. So add the provider-specific box:

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$ vagrant box add gce https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant-google/raw/master/google.box

Make sure the box is added:

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$ vagrant box list

Add a Vagrantfile and override the defaults:

Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) has switched the init manager from Upstart to systemd. Will the Docker installation change? Let’s give a try and install it on a Google Compute Engine instance.

Install Docker:

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$ curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh

Add user to Docker group for running commands without sudo:

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$ sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}

Log out, then log back in.

Verify the installation:

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$ docker run hello-world
Hello from Docker.
This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.
To generate this message, Docker took the following steps:
1. The Docker client contacted the Docker daemon.
2. The Docker daemon pulled the "hello-world" image from the Docker Hub.
3. The Docker daemon created a new container from that image which runs the
    executable that produces the output you are currently reading.
4. The Docker daemon streamed that output to the Docker client, which sent it
    to your terminal.
To try something more ambitious, you can run an Ubuntu container with:
$ docker run -it ubuntu bash
Share images, automate workflows, and more with a free Docker Hub account:
https://hub.docker.com
For more examples and ideas, visit:
https://docs.docker.com/userguide/

For upgrading, the process is the same as installing:

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$ curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh